Obama Aides Considered A Clinton-For-Biden Switch, Book Says

Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Biden at a White House event in October 2011. A new book says President Obama's aides were then studying whether to replace Biden with the former first lady on the 2012 ticket.

Kevin Dietsch UPI /Landov

Originally published on November 1, 2013 11:52 am

"President Obama's top aides secretly considered replacing Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. with Hillary Rodham Clinton on the 2012 ticket, undertaking extensive focus-group sessions and polling in late 2011 when Mr. Obama's re-election outlook appeared uncertain," The New York Times reports.

The Times gets that news from an advance copy of Double Down: Game Change 2012, a book due next week from political journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann. The newspaper says it obtained a copy "from people in the publishing industry."

Obviously, it never happened. According to the Times, Halperin and Heilemann report Obama's aides "concluded that despite Mrs. Clinton's popularity, the move would not offer a significant enough political boost to Mr. Obama to justify such a radical move." Clinton was Obama's secretary of state through the president's first term. The former first lady and Biden are now among those who may make bids for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.

William Daley, who was White House chief of staff in 2011, tells the Times that it was simply "due diligence" to study a possible switch.